Catalogue description Records of the Civil Service Pay Research Unit

The Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 1953 to 1955, recommended that the primary principle of Civil Service pay should be fair comparison with the current remuneration of outside staffs employed on broadly comparable work taking account of differences in other conditions of service. To establish this it recommended that the task should be assigned to a branch of the Civil Service not directly connected with those divisions of the Treasury responsible for questions of pay and conditions of service. It also recommended that means should be found to enable the staff associations to participate fully in the fact-finding process. In accordance with these recommendations the Civil Service Pay Research Unit was established in October 1956 under the aegis of the Civil Service National Whitley Council, day-to-day control being vested in a director appointed by the Prime Minister. The Unit's functions were to establish job comparisons between the Civil Service and outside industry and to ascertain the pay and conditions of service relating to the outside comparisons. It reported its findings to the Pay Research Steering Committee of the Civil Service National Whitley Council as a basis for determining the pay of the grades concerned.

Between 1975 and 1978 the work of the Unit was suspended under the pay restraint policies of the Labour government. Following its reactivation the Unit was required to report annually about its work and the discharge of its responsibilities to a newly-established Civil Service Pay Research Unit Board which was set up to safeguard the independence and impartiality of the Unit in all its work. Under its terms of reference this Board was required to submit an annual report to the Prime Minister for publication. It was also required to satisfy itself that the unit had exercised its responsibilities properly and efficiently and to discuss with the director, as it judged necessary, points arising on the work of the Unit. It was also responsible for giving guidance to the director on the release of such information about the Unit's work and findings as was compatible with the effective operation of the system. Both in this context and in making its own annual report the Board was required to take account of the need for confidentiality specified by co-operating organisations and the views of the National Whitley Council on the effect of disclosure on the subsequent confidential negotiations by the Official and Staff Sides on material provided by the Unit.

In 1980 the Conservative government decided to suspend the operation of the Civil Service pay agreement. In the following year it set up an inquiry into Civil Service pay, chaired by Sir John Megaw, a retired lord justice of appeal, and announced its decision to run down the Unit. Consequent upon this the chairman and the five independent members of the Civil Service Pay Research Unit Board submitted their resignations and the Unit was itself subsequently dissolved in the Autumn of 1981.